Getting Squeezed Coming and Going

Influential Planning Group Wants Two-Way Congestion Pricing

For Lower Manhattan residents who already feel aggrieved by the State’s pending congestion pricing plan (which will charge people who live here to drive to their homes), the Regional Plan Association (RPA) has a suggestion for how to make it worse: levy a toll upon drivers both as they enter and as they leave the zone south of 60th Street.

In a report released this week, titled “Congestion Pricing in NYC: Getting It Right,” the RPA (an independent, not-for-profit civic group that develops ideas to improve the economy, environment, and quality of life in the New York metropolitan area) proposes that, “to eliminate toll shopping and better manage congestion… is best accomplished by implementing the congestion fee as a two-way charge.” The report observes that, “by charging for both portions of a trip — entering and leaving the zone — the variable tolls will have more influence on driver behavior, incentivizing drivers to shift their trips out of the peak period whenever possible.”

The RPA proposal endorses a range of prices for entering or leaving the zone, ranging from a baseline of $6.12 (to be charged each way, 24 hours day) to as much as $9.18 (to be charged during morning and evening rush hours).

On the question of whether Lower Manhattan residents should receive a discount on such charges, the RPA analysis says that, “exemptions for specific classes of users should be as limited as possible.” (Oddly, the RPA specifically recommends that taxis and for-hire vehicles, such as car dispatched by Uber and Lyft, be exempted from congestion pricing, in spite of the fact that they appear to be significant contributors to local congestion.)

This position directly contradicts a resolution enacted by Community Board 1 in February, 2018, which noted that, “other major cities, such as London, Singapore and Stockholm, have successfully implemented a congestion pricing plan along with significant discounts to those living in the congestion zone. London’s plan, for example, offers a 90 percent discount, and substantial discounts are routinely offered even in New York such as [to] Staten Island residents using the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge.”

Indeed, the latest round of toll increases for bridges and tunnels operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority actually contains a further rollback to tolls for Staten Island residents using Verrazzano Bridge. When the toll for that span jumped to $19 earlier this year, the Governor Andrew Cuomo froze the resident rate at $5.50. This translates to a discount that has effectively increased from 68 percent to 72 percent. Mr. Cuomo justified this preferential treatment for Staten Island residents (who cannot drive onto or off of their island borough without paying a toll) by saying, “the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge is a critical link between Staten Island and the rest of New York, and residents don’t deserve to be nickel and dimed every time they cross it.” He added that the discount for residents, “is the right and fair thing to do and will ensure Staten Islanders keep more money in their pockets.”

No such accommodation is planned for residents of Lower Manhattan, who will (like Staten Island dwellers) be effectively trapped within the toll zone, unable to drive in or out without paying a fee that may be as high as $11.52, according to another version of the plan. An additional variant of the proposal would charge residents for driving their cars on any street within the toll zone, even if they do not cross its boundaries. (This would be the equivalent of charging Staten Island residents a toll for taking their cars out of the garage, without driving over any bridge.)

Click to watch the traffic flow

The conspicuous absence of any carve-out for people who live within the toll zone is a departure from prevailing practice in multiple other locations around the City and the State, in addition to Staten Island. In Queens, residents of the Rockaways and Broad Channel pay $1.41 to traverse the Gil Hodges Memorial or Cross Bay Bridges, a discount of 67 percent from the full toll of $4.25. Further afield, residents of Grand Island (near the Canadian border) are given a 91 percent discount (relative to the $1.00 toll paid by non-residents) on the bridge that connects their community to the rest of New York State.

Congestion pricing has also been implemented internationally, where discounts for residents appear to be the norm. In London, for example, the program is widely regarded as a success, and people who live within the tolling zone are granted a discount of 90 percent from the full charge of approximately $15.23, at current exchange rates.

The lack of any local exemption could weigh heavily on Lower Manhattan communities where car ownership is higher than the norm for Manhattan as a whole. A 2015 study by the online real estate research site, AddressReport.com, found that Tribeca and Battery Park City are the two neighborhoods with the highest rates of car ownership anywhere in the borough, with 36 percent and 28 percent of households reporting that they keep at least one car. Conversely, the same report found that the Financial District has the second-lowest prevalence of car ownership in Manhattan, with only 14 percent of households reporting car ownership.

At a March CB1 meeting that discussed the plan, Marc Ameruso (who serves on the Board’s Quality of Life and Transportation Committees), said, “I was at one of the congestion pricing hearings. And an interesting thing happened — all the usual suspects, Transportation Alternatives, the lobbying groups, all were in favor. But what surprised me was that all the individual citizens, who generally don’t come out to these hearings, 99 percent of them were against it. And they all had good, valid reasons.”

CB1 member Marc Ameruso: “Some of the politicians say it will stop unnecessary drives into Manhattan. Who the hell are they to say that my or any else’s drive into the City is unnecessary? The arrogance of that statement — it disgusts me.”

“It hurts the middle class, it hurts the poor, and hurts small businesses,” Mr. Ameruso continued. “Some of the politicians say it will stop unnecessary drives into Manhattan. Who the hell are they to say that my or any else’s drive into the City is unnecessary? The arrogance of that statement — it disgusts me.”

“It’s really a vicious cycle of legal graft,” he added. “Money goes to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority [MTA], which pays it to the Transit Workers Union, which gives money to politicians, who then give contracts to the real estate industry.” This was a reference to the State agency that oversees the subways, bus lines, and commuter railroads, which is intended to be the primary beneficiary of funds raised by congestion pricing. Indeed, when the MTA released its new capital plan this week, nearly one-third of the $51 billion total it plans to spend in coming years is projected to come from congestion pricing levies.

“A vicious cycle of legal graft is all this is,” Mr. Ameruso reiterated. This point inspired a round of applause from the dozens of people attending the meeting. “We have been talking about this for years,” he continued. “We need to dismantle the MTA and every other authority and replace them with agencies that are more accountable to the people. CB1 needs to finally take that subject up.”

Mr. Ameruso was followed by Paul Kefer, president of the Southbridge Towers board of directors, who said, “congestion pricing is an abomination for Lower Manhattan. All they are trying to do is raise money. And it’s going to impact all of us — all prices are going to go up, because when trucks come in, they are going to pass the expense onto us. It sounds like a done deal, but there have to be exemptions for people who live in the area. You should not have to pay a toll to get home.”

The budget passed by the New York State legislature in April of this year allows the MTA to launch congestion pricing as soon as January 1, 2021.